Houma-made platform heads across Atlantic

Robert ZulloSenior Staff Writer

Thursday

Oct 23, 2008 at 12:16 PMOct 23, 2008 at 12:20 PM

DULAC — Towering over trawlers and the odd passing oyster boat, the four-story framework of steel looked as out of place as a space ship slowly moving through Bayou Grand Caillou.Bystanders looked up from crab lines and fishing poles along the west bank of the bayou as a 8200-ton section of an oil platform built in Houma headed for the first leg of a trans-Atlantic journey out on the back of a monstrous barge Tuesday afternoon.Built by Gulf Island Fabrication in Houma, the 420-foot-long section is intended to serve as an underwater component of an oil platform off the coast of west Africa, Chief Executive Officer Kerry Chauvin said.Towed from the front and pushed from behind by a group of tugboats, the platform section left south Louisiana on the way to a sea buoy, where the giant cargo will be turned over to ocean-going tugs for the crossing, Chauvin said.Confidentiality agreements prohibit Chauvin from releasing the name of the client who commissioned the structure or its exact destination, he said. He also declined to release the price of the structure.However, the platform piece kept between 100 and 150 workers busy for about a year and a half, Chauvin said.“It really was a good project for our company,” he said. “Hopefully we’ll get some more in the near future.”Various drilling structures and production platforms are built at Gulf Island’s Houma yard and at two yards in Ingleside, Texas.They are frequently shipped across the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean as well as the Atlantic. “We do deliver a lot of goods and services to other areas of the world,” Chauvin said.

Senior Staff Writer Robert Zullo can be reached at 850-1150 or robert.zullo@houmatoday.com.

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